


please don't go (i think of you whenever i'm alone)

by wordsfallapart



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (because apparently that's the tag that applies to platonic sam and dean?), (but everyone knows that this is not the end for them), (they need to hug each other), Angst, Dean Winchester Needs a Hug, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug, Sam goes to Stanford, Stanford Era, gencest, pre-Stanford era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 14:42:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28993875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordsfallapart/pseuds/wordsfallapart
Summary: sam leaves for college. it sort of breaks dean's heart. such is life.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	please don't go (i think of you whenever i'm alone)

**Author's Note:**

> i felt like making myself cry a little. this may not make you cry, but sorry in advance anyway.
> 
> this is the fic where sam leaves for stanford. for the record, this is completely gen, but has 'romantic' tropes (like crying in the rain, wishing to be enough for someone, etc). i write sam and dean as a really intense and intimate relationship, but they are completely platonic in my eyes.
> 
> (title taken from "please don't go" by joel adams)

Sam and John are screaming at each other, and all Dean can do is watch as his family falls apart. He’s not even all the way here, in this room. He feels outside his body, looking at the scene from above. _This is shock_ , he thinks.  


John tells Sam not to come back. Sam says that he won’t, Dean sees his eyes and knows that he means it, and that’s what makes him jolt back into his body with a shudder. He makes a noise in the back of his throat that he can’t control, rough and almost whimpering like a wounded animal, and Sam looks at him. His eyes soften for only an instant before hardening again.  


Sam grabs his things—already packed—and walks out the door. For a moment, Dean’s feet are stuck in place, body tipping like he’s a sunflower chasing after the sun. Somehow, he manages to stumble after Sam, who’s walking with his head held high. Dean tries to force words to come out of his mouth, throat working. The only word he manages to croak out is “Sammy.”  


Sam turns immediately, and while he keeps his defiant stance, Dean sees the slight hunch of his shoulders, the wobble in the jut of his chin, the way his fingers tremble, and the pain mixed with the stubbornness in his eyes.  


Dean wants to say _Please don’t go, please don’t leave me_.  


He wants to say _I’m proud of you, so proud of you, but why can’t you be happy here with us? Why does everyone leave me? Why are we—why am I—not enough for you?_  


He wants to say _You deserve to be free of this_.  


He wants to say _You betrayed me, and I hate you_.  


With too many words crowding his mind, he instead asks, “Do you... need a ride?”  


Sam gives him a shaky smile, says quietly, “I have a bus ticket.”  


“I’ll drive you to the station.” His baby brother nods. When Dean goes inside to get the keys, John tries to stop him. For the first and only time in his life, Dean tells his father to fuck right off, snatches his keys and coat, and tucks something carefully into its pocket, slamming the door shut behind him.  


When they arrive at the station, Dean parks and turns the engine off, and now there’s nothing to fill the silence except for the rain pattering the body of the Impala. He turns his head to look at Sam, notices the way the light from the streetlamp hits his hair and lights it up, the angle of the beam slanting across his nose and lips, and his eyes look almost yellow.  


They take each other in for a few long minutes, both of them trying to make the words leave their mouths. The words don’t come, staying on the tips of their tongues and banging at the windows of their eyes.  


Sam’s eyes close, and he takes in a deep breath. “Thank you, Dean,” he says on his exhale.  


“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean replies, pained. He gets out of the car before Sam does, grabs his bag from the back. He barely looks at his brother, doesn’t hug him or say anything else as he watches Sam board the bus, tears glimmering in both their eyes. And if a few of those tears fall, well, they can just say it’s the rain.  


Dean stands out in the rain for several minutes after the bus has pulled away, letting the rain drench him and clutching his amulet in his palm, letting the pain from the horns digging into his palm ground him. When he climbs back into the Impala, hair plastered to his forehead, all is quiet.  


“Please don’t leave,” he says, but the only person there to hear is the empty space beside him.  


*  


Sam forces himself not to let his tears fall after those few in the rain. He doesn’t cry, not once, on the whole bus ride to Palo Alto, even though all he wants is to run back and into Dean’s arms where he feels safest, like he used to do when he was little and scared of nightmares, the real ones as well as the ones in his sleep.  


Two days later, as Sam is unpacking his bag, he finds their beaten copy of _The Hobbit_ that Dean used to read to him, over and over. Underneath, wedged into a pair of socks, is five hundred and fourteen dollars cash.  


Sam curls himself into a ball on his bed and sobs so hard he starts hiccupping.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me and this fic on tumblr at @wordsfallapart (same handle as here)! come say hi and yell about sam and dean with me :)


End file.
